Ocular exploration in the dark by patients with visual neglect.

Eye-movements were recorded as patients with visual neglect searched in a completely darkened room to determine whether any light was present. Fixations were confined almost entirely to the right of the midline, and biased rightwards within that area. A control group with visual field defects searched equally to both sides. This shows that neglect patients have a bias to look to the right which is independent of the difficulty they also have in processing sensory information in the left visual field. Results are related to theories of the hemispheric control of attention and to the view that the representation of contralateral space is impaired in neglect.